Tag Archives: mindfulness

Winter finally arrived in our fair river valley in the form of a harsh and deadly freeze which assaulted most of the eastern half of this country over the holiday season.

Occasionally, I’d glance at the temperature gauge in our car and see a number hovering around or below zero. With the biting wind, it often seemed colder.

Our three dogs were not keen on going outside to do any amount of business, especially the smallest of them who found herself at the veterinarian with a nasty bout of colitis which may or may not have been related to cold weather issues and, ahem, business or lack thereof.

And yet, we soldiered through. Fortunately for the human beans in this pack of ours, we could don coats and boots and we did manage to spend some time outside, in spite of the deadly temperatures. And it was lovely indeed.

“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day… even every winter day. I am sensible that I am imbibing health when I open my mouth to the wind. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always.” ~H.D. Thoreau (via Brainpickings)

One particularly brisk day I attended a winter plant walk to see what we could see. I learned a lot, procured some mushroom tonic which I believe helped me shake a head cold, and met a new friend as well.

Oh to have an alpaca coat in this cold clime! We had a lovely conversation and I was whispered many alpaca secrets that morning.

Eventually, we were treated to a bit of a thaw, as we are wont to do here in Ohio being neither North nor South. It is nice to breathe cool air instead of gasping at the cold.

This winter has been so very different from the last. I look back at last winter’s blog posts and feel the fragility and desperation of a self barely holding on, riddled with illness – in both body and spirit – and a palpable malaise in front of which only the act of writing could keep me.

This winter, today, now, things are lighter. I approach this harsh world with a new foundation forged of the groundedness which yoga practice, healthy eating and the like have afforded me. I am deeply grateful. The other day at in meditation class we learned that the idea of mindfulness, which everyone goes on about in this day and age, is actually a bit of a mistranslation from East to West. That a more fitting way to put the notion is that of heartfulness.

I found this idea quite captivating and found myself ruminating upon it long after our hour together as a group. What if, when we begin the spinning sensation of uncontrollable thinking – “good” or “bad” (light or shadow) – we might just go and curl up in our heartspace for a bit? The space where kindness dwells. The space where we are beyond judgement. We are so very hard on ourselves, aren’t we? When we think dark thoughts, or lose our patience or don’t live up to some constant standard we hold ourselves to. What if we could just let these human tendencies come, and quietly, without judgement, let them go? With a full heart.

This notion is not a new one, I am sure. I am not one for labels or for following one particular tradition or spiritual path. But this idea of heartfulness over mindfulness really makes sense to me. And it’s nice for things to make sense now and again, isn’t it?

There is much brewing here in the studio, amidst all of the bothers of the day to day, and the workings of the day job. Following the lead of my friend Kevin Necessary (amazing illustrator and official cartoonist at our local WCPO) I did something quite out of character the other day and downloaded a digital drawing application on my phone called Procreate Pocket. Kevin had posted some lovely digital drawings and I was interested to see if I might be able to do something of my own with this new tool.

And so I am something of an old dog learning a few new tricks.

It feels nice to use the phone as a tool, versus feeling used up by the phone and all of its trappings. I’ve curbed my social media use in recent days, being more conscious of whether I am using it, or it is using me.

I’ve ordered some clayboard panels which should be in next week to expand a small painting of mine into a triptych of sorts – a special commission for some kind patrons who happen to like cows.

I’ve said yes to a low-paying illustration job in the hope that the exercise alone will be worth the effort.

I’ve recommitted to not only keeping up with the flute playing so near and dear to my heart, but learning a few tunes on the concertina which I spend so much time around anyway at the shop. (So far, I have a polka, a bit of a waltz, and half of a jig. and maybe a bit of that old hornpipe I tried to learn a few summers ago) I am so fortunate to have access to these beautiful instruments. I might as well learn to play one.

With the dawning of a new year, thoughts turn to re-centering in the things which mean the most to us. My word for 2018 is T R U S T. I like having a word to ponder and work with, versus a long list of resolutions. I’m learning to trust my own intuition more and more. A real gift of this stage of one’s life.

Tomorrow the hub and I head west for a couple of days by the ocean in between our busy work schedules. Like a landlocked mermaid, I can already taste the salt air and am deeply looking forward to hearing the waves crashing.

“Dance upon the shore; What need have you to care for wind or water’s roar?” ~W. B. Yeats

Keep an eye out in the usual posty places (IG , Twitter) for drawings and musings as we travel. Wishing you the brightest of New Year’s offerings. May it be all we hope it can be. And more than we could ever have dreamed of.

“Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.” ~D.W. Winnicott

It’s so tempting to run for the hills. To hide. To make the work, but never show it – feeling it to be not good enough, not ready enough, ever. But this is not an option really. And so we forge on.

“Always go a little further into the water than you feel you are capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth and when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about at the right place to do something exciting.” ~David Bowie

After a time of being comfortably down the proverbial rabbit hole, alas, I must come up for air and here is the latest. Like some sort of proverbial Icarus, I’ll admit to flying a bit close to the sun of late. But needs must, and rest will come…..

On top of readying my own art work to present to the world, I have also been doing some writing on the work of others. The September and October issues of the online publication Aeqai feature articles of my impressions on some really wonderful locally produced and curated work from lands far away. It has been interesting to pull together art and writing in this way, as I usually write merely here on my blog or craft the odd artist’s statement now and again. To write about the artwork of others and to ponder it through a lens of critique is to more fully grasp it in a sense. Knowing I was to be writing about these shows made me a better viewer of them. I hope to continue writing for Aeqai in future months, adding my voice to those of others shining light upon recent work they have seen.

And what about that work being presented to the world? Well, the stars have aligned to see my work showing in three different venues in the coming weeks, and here they are.

“Transience is the force of time that makes a ghost of every experience.”~John O’Donohue

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”~Simone Weil

First, Transience, a solo show at the Park National Bank Gallery at University of Cincinnati’s Clermont campus. It’s a lovely space and I’m thrilled to have a number of older works dusted off from the archives and showing once again, right alongside some newer work as well. (Yes, the ever so popular Animal Alphabet from Inktober is being displayed in full and the drawings look great all together!) At the heart of the show is my process of gathering from the world and from my experiences to create art along the way in sketchbooks and finished studio work.

Years of sketchbooks showcasing travels and artistic process can be seen in these glass cases in the gallery. It’s gratifying to see them all together.

It is interesting to see threads of continuity in work through the years which I didn’t notice before. For example, I’m once again showing my painting Selkie which is a bit of a self-portrait-meets-personal-mythology work.

You’ll notice that Selkie offers a rather raw heart to the viewer (my mom has always thought this painting is rather creepy but I rather like her). What I didn’t realize is that I had created some of this same imagery in the three dimensional realm as well in the form of a hand stitched fiber heart, and a cast of my hand in plaster.

These objects were part of other work at other times and I hadn’t realized how they mirrored the Selkie imagery until I went to install this show. My subconscious self clearly has some ideas and themes working themselves out amidst its subterranean depths. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to this work once again, on a deeper level and to share it with the students at UC Clermont.

A second show to open with just one piece of mine in it is an artistic tribute to the writings of Neil Gaiman.

Poster by David Micheal Beck

I crafted an illustration of Nobody Owens from Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book which I found so captivating. I am excited to have my little painting alongside those of other illustrators from around town and am honored to be a part of the show!

An Intimate Portrait of Nobody Owens, Oil on Paper

This show opens this week on Thursday evening. Stop by the Know Theatre if you are in town and say hello! (Be sure and get your tickets to Neverwhere as well!)

My painting I Grew A Pair (Apples) will be part of the Off The Wall installation and I have three other works submitted as well. This group show features new work by members of the Kennedy Collective and is an annual treat for the local community. That opening is November 18. There will be cookies. I can promise that.

By tomorrow I shall have all work delivered and by next week, all will be properly installed for viewing in their gallery spaces for the following few weeks. While this all has taken a good amount of time and effort to pull off, I have been careful not to fall into the mindset of busy in the midst of pulling it all together. And I believe I have been successful in that endeavor. Sylvia Linsteadt of Tatterdemalion fame posted an article the other day about the notion of Resisting the Commodification of Time, with which I firmly agree on every level. The article speaks to a level of mindfulness which I believe is desperately lacking in our world just now. Everything so fast and furious, so new and shiny. Mindfulness is at the very heart of my sketchbook practice and the workshops I teach. Just the simple act of slowing down to draw something pulls us back into a better relationship with time, back into our bodies. The world needs us to do this work.

Mindful
by Mary Oliver

Every Day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It is what I was born for—
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world—
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant—
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these—
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

And so we do. If you google “urban sketching”, you will see that the practice of drawing in a little book has truly gone globally viral. People all over the world are doing it. Here in the Queen City of Cincinnati, we have joined the ‘official’ ranks of Urban Sketchers and are getting our drawings out there along with other artful places such as Manchester and Hong Kong. If you are coming to town and are looking to sketch with us here, let us know!! We can be found over in the wonderful online world of Twitter and we’d love to meet you!

And that is all for now. I have ghostly beings creeping into my bedtime sketchbook lately who are begging to be fleshed out further into more oil paintings. I have knitting projects sitting idle as well which could use some finishing up. It’s a time of year for walking in the woods amidst the fallen leaves, brewing more and more tea, and gently, ever so gently, slowing down.